Along the Way
by Elizabeth Culmer
Summary: Idealism is hard to balance against the rest of life. Hermione, post DH, mostly gen. Written for Femgenficathon III.


**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Summary:** Idealism is hard to balance against the rest of life. Hermione, post-DH, mostly gen.

**Author's Note:** This story was written for **femgenficathon** 2007, for prompt #128: _I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water._ - Amy Tan (A master list of ficathon stories can be found at community . livejournal . com / femgenficathon / 54992 . html)

"Along the Way" is DH-compliant, including the epilogue, but ignores anything JKR may or may not have said in various post-book interviews (which I have not read), except the trio's adult jobs, which I inadvertently learned via internet osmosis.

Thanks to Willowgreen and Vicky for beta-reading. I still think the story is kind of shapeless and meandering, but that's entirely my fault, not theirs; it was a _lot_ worse before they looked it over.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o  
**Along the Way  
**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Eighteen is for funerals. Remus Lupin, Tonks, Fred, Colin Creevey... the list goes on. You stand on Harry's left while Ron stands on his right, pressing against him to confirm that you're all still alive.

Then you leave Ron and Harry to the Weasleys and endure a marathon series of Floo stops all the way to Australia. Your parents are happy in Canberra, happy without you, and you almost leave without lifting the spell. What could they possibly understand about a war? How can they help you fix anything? But even though you've had so little to do with them these past seven years, even though they've never really understood the wizarding world, they're still your parents. And you can't shut away anyone's real self forever.

So you fast-talk your way into their house, flick your wand, and wait for the confusion to clear from their eyes. Then you apologize. Yes, they'd agreed to let you protect them with magic, but you'd implied you meant a Fidelius Charm, not a wholesale erasure of their existence. Your mother lectures; you sit on an unfamiliar sofa and let the guilt wash over you. Your father asks about the war; you look out the window into a strange garden and tell him you worked with a small group to find and destroy one of Voldemort's secret weapons. It isn't exactly a lie.

"It's over now, Hermione," your mother says when you stumble to a halt, still tripping over the names of the dead. "It will be all right, now that this madness is finished. You're safe; you can get back to regular life. Have you started thinking about university?"

They still assume you're going to live in their world. They believe magic is an extraneous talent - like being able to play the piano with your toes or something equally frivolous - and they want you to set it aside now that you're nearly an adult. They think you're wasting yourself on childish nonsense instead of applying your intelligence to something useful and important. Strangely, the burn of resentment steadies you. It's one familiar thing in a topsy-turvy world.

You fly home with them on a Muggle airplane and help unpack everything into your old house. On the second day back in England, you introduce them to Ron; your mother seems skeptical, as if she isn't sure he's good enough for you, but your father likes him right off. You hope that you can start over, that maybe you can make your parents see who you really are.

But two days later your mother mentions university again, your father suggests applying for a summer job at the book shop in town, and you think you might scream. Your mind and fingers itch for real work. This isn't your world anymore; its problems aren't yours. You want to go where your efforts will matter. You've given your parents their memories back; they don't need you for anything else, and you're tired of arguments. So you write a note, slip out after dinner, and leave Muggle life for good. You find a flat off Diagon Alley, split the rent with Harry, and dive into the rebuilding.

You're going to change the world.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Nineteen is for frantic studying and taking your NEWTs - one year late but you can't get anywhere worthwhile without a piece of paper saying you know your magic. That's fair enough, but the tests matter even more if you're Muggle-born; if you weren't born into this world, you have to be twice as good as anyone else in order to get half the consideration. Even now, blood matters. It shouldn't matter, and you want to make sure it won't for anyone else, ever again. You draw charts of the relative influence of all the Ministry departments, trying to decide where to focus your efforts.

Meanwhile, Ron and Harry join the Aurors on special waivers. They have the experience and they're needed too badly for the Ministry to fuss about technical niceties; it's funny, in a not-at-all-funny way, what side benefits come out of fighting in a war, Harry says. You think you might break down if they get killed, but you understand why the boys can't let well enough alone - they're too brave and pigheaded to stop fighting and let other people protect them.

"I'm moving in here next weekend," Ron says one evening halfway through his and Harry's training. "If I don't get out of the Burrow, I'll go bonkers, and this way you two will save on your rent. Besides, I miss seeing you." He plants a kiss at the corner of your mouth.

"I miss you, too," you tell him. "But if you interrupt my revising, you die." Across the table, Harry laughs.

You find you like sleeping beside Ron. The other benefits are nice, too.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Twenty is for applications and interviews and arguments. Nobody takes you seriously. Nobody ever understands. Nobody seems to see how the wizarding world turns everything on its head, and nobody wants to set up a legal system that respects the _process_ of law and assumes innocence until guilt is proven. Nobody wants to use logic instead of hearsay, popularity, and stereotypes.

You can't get into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, which was your first choice. You settle for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures instead. You won't have as broad a scope for encouraging change, but at least you can still work to help house elves and werewolves - or you _could_ work to help them if anyone would listen to you.

Frustration curdles in your throat, building until you can't hold back your anger. Then you go home and scream at Ron, using him as a stand-in for all the purebloods and half-bloods and just plain idiots you deal with at work - the ones you _can't_ scream at unless you want to lose your job. Sometimes he screams back, asks what he's done to deserve this, throws the stress of his own job and your indifference to his problems into your face. You turn away, he storms out, and then you both spend days in stony silence, thumping dishes and sending messages via Harry, who rubs his forehead, mutters about idiots who can't recognize a good thing when they see one, and swears he's going to move out any day now.

Sometimes, though, Ron understands, and he holds you and rubs your back and kisses your hair until you cry out all your frustration. "You're amazing," he tells you, "you're beautiful, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and you'll find a way to make everything work. That's what you do. I believe in you."

You wonder what you did to deserve him.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

By twenty-two, things are beginning to change. A little. You've learned who your allies and enemies are at the Ministry, learned who makes the decisions that matter, learned how to nudge the system in your favor. You're starting to accept that you can't do everything on your own, that sometimes people are right when they tell you to back off and leave well enough alone for the moment. Patience burns like poison in your stomach, but you tell yourself it's like revising for a difficult exam: you can't do everything at once or you'll get buried in a mountain of meaningless details.

Harry moves out, but he and Ginny drop by every weekend, looking ridiculously happy. They never seem to fight, or if they do, they keep it to themselves and patch it over the same day. You wonder what their secret is.

In October, they get married. They deserve a happy ending, or a happy beginning, or whatever happy milestone a wedding is meant to be.

You tell Ron that he doesn't have to follow Harry's example, not when you still can't go a month without blowing up at each other over trivial nonsense, but when he asks, you say yes. You can't imagine spending the rest of your life without him.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Twenty-three is when it falls apart. What do you know about love? What does Ron know? How long can you go on together when a third of your conversations end up as arguments, and a third of your arguments end up as fights? You can't live without him, but you can't live with him either, not without Harry there to mediate - and there's no way you could burden Harry with that when he has his own life to live.

Each month brings you closer to the wedding, and each month the fights get worse. You start spending weekends with friends and writing to people who live too far away for convenient Apparation - anything to give you a moment to breathe. Finally, in August, Ron finds one of your letters to Viktor and accuses you of cheating on him. You throw him out of the flat, your mind blank with white-hot anger, but underneath that you're almost relieved. The worst has happened; there's nothing left to fight.

Ron moves back into the Burrow. It isn't fair that he has somewhere to run to. _You_ can't go home to _your_ parents; there's no way they'd take you in, not after the way you left them. They barely even knew you were engaged. You borrow Harry and Ginny's guest room instead, when you're not sleeping on a sofa at work.

The Ministry is a maze of gossip. People whisper behind your back and all your projects bog down in petty bureaucratic details, no matter how much you insist that your personal life has nothing to do with your professional competence. You know people are judging you and finding you wanting. You know they think this is proof that you aren't good enough. How can you presume to know what's best for the wizarding world if you can't even manage your own life?

Even Harry thinks you're doing the wrong thing, thinks that you should get back together with Ron. Why can't he see that it was a mistake from the start, that you and Ron could never stop fighting, that it's better to get out before it's too late? Why can't anyone see that Ron deserves someone who can be kind to him? You're trying to save everyone from decades of misery, but nobody seems to understand.

You want to escape your life.

Finally, on Christmas Eve, Harry drags you away from your gloomy contemplation of his fireplace and Apparates you into a forest in the middle of nowhere. "It's a reminder," he says, when you complain about the cold and his lack of consideration.

You remember the last year of the war, those long weeks without Ron and nearly without hope. "Oh, lovely. You're telling me I should get over myself because at least this time we're not being chased by a madman?"

"No, he's telling you that your problems are only as bad as you make them," says Ginny as she steps from behind a snow-dusted tree, hauling Ron along by his scarf. "All right, you two. We've had enough of you making yourselves miserable for no reason, so apologize and make up before I snap and do something I'll regret later." She shoves Ron forward, toward you.

Ron stumbles, and you reach out to steady him before you remember that you're trying to stay out of his life. He catches your hand, and you meet his eyes.

This time he has no dramatic rescue to offer as an apology, but seeing him is more than good enough. He seems to have forgiven you, too - you can't figure out _why_, not after the way you made everyone's life hell, but you don't want to break the miracle by looking too closely.

You fall asleep wrapped in each other's arms, finally back home.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Twenty-four is the wedding. You're still not completely sure this is a good idea - it takes more than love to make a relationship work - but you've made a commitment and you're going to see it through. You can learn anything; it's your greatest talent. You will learn to make this work. Then you'll teach Ron, if he hasn't already figured it out himself.

The ring on your finger seems to change the way people see you - everyone assumes you're a full-fledged adult and takes you more seriously. You're torn between fuming at the injustice of it all, and wondering whether they'll wake up and realize you have no more idea what you're doing than you ever did. Fixing the world seems ten times further away now than when you started, despite the inches of progress you've forced through the system over the past five years, and you wonder if you're getting anywhere or just playing Sisyphus.

Harry lists off your reforms when you gripe to him. Contracts for house elves that forbid abuse, a statute outlawing job discrimination against werewolves (providing they take Wolfsbane every full moon), subsidies to allow werewolves to afford Wolfsbane, and an interdepartmental oversight committee to make sure people aren't arrested without warrants. "It's not anywhere near everything that needed fixing, but it's an amazing start," he says. "Give over, Hermione, you can't change everything in a day."

"It's been years, not a day," you grumble, but you take his point.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Twenty-six is for Rose.

Pregnancy is terrifying. Motherhood is more so. What if you mess up? What if you can't get everything right? Suddenly you and Ron are responsible for a _person_, for a tiny, wrinkled, screaming, beautiful girl who depends utterly on you. This is the most important challenge you've ever accepted in your life. You take a leave of absence from the Ministry and nearly manage not to think about the work you're missing.

You phone your mother and beg for advice, and instead of asking why you've ignored her all these years, she comes by to show you how to change diapers. "Children are always overwhelming," she says as you pour her a cup of tea. "But there's nothing more rewarding, I think - you can never take full responsibility for what they become, but it's a joy to see them do well."

You look at Rose, feel her soft weight in your arms, and think you might understand why your mother is willing to reach out and forgive you. You promise to be a better daughter as well as a mother. You're sure you'll forget and backslide - avoiding your parents is nearly a reflex these days - but maybe the aspiration of a goal is as important as reaching it? The thought feels heretical, and you redouble your efforts to do everything perfectly.

Ron sighs, and enlists Luna to babysit and give you one night off each week.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At twenty-seven, you go back to work part-time, this time in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Once again, nobody takes you seriously; they assume having a child turns your brain to pudding. You take great pleasure in proving them wrong and winning a reputation as the most effective member of the department. You may not have as many hours to give as other people, not with Rose at home, but your hours are worth twice as much as other people's.

Ron has the nerve to grin and collect outrageous numbers of Galleons from people who bet you'd leave work for good or be shunted aside to a secretarial position. He takes you and Rose to Egypt with the money, though, which makes up for the annoyance. Bill and Fleur show off their daughter, blonde and graceful and heartbreakingly beautiful. Beside Victoire, Rose looks plain and blotchy, and you know her hair will end up as uncontrollable as yours.

She's ten times more beautiful anyway.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Twenty-nine is for Hugo.

You're less terrified about the physical details - you've been through this before - but a second child is different from a first child. What if Rose is jealous? What if you can't manage to take care of two children at once? Rose already runs you ragged when you try to watch her alone, and you can't imagine adding the strain of a baby on top of that.

You start having crying jags in the middle of the night. You try to hide them from Ron, but he knows your sleeping habits too well by now; he always wakes up and sees your face blotchy and wet and your nose running like a faucet. The first few times, he tries to reason your doubts away - "Look, of course brothers and sisters are going to be jealous sometimes - nobody can get on with everybody all the time - but it's miles better than being alone. I bet half your trouble with your parents is because they don't have another kid to split their attention," - but that derails into arguments.

By the fifth time, Ron just sighs, hands you another tissue, and wraps one arm around your shoulders in a loose hug. "It'll be all right," he says. "I promise it'll be all right. You're a great mother, you're an amazing person, I love you, and I swear it'll be all right." The soft repetition lulls you back to sleep.

He's right in the end; Rose throws occasional fits over the sudden theft of two-thirds of her parental attention, but mostly she's fascinated by Hugo. She plays with his tiny, fat hands and toes, dangles colored toys in front of his face and lets him grab them, and points at things around the house and tells him their names. Hugo babbles cheerful nonsense back at her. Rose sniffs, corrects him, and moves on to another object.

"She's going to be a terror when she's older," Charlie says during a reunion at the Burrow. "Don't let your big sister boss you around too much, Hugo; pretend you're a dragon and snarl at her when she gets too pushy. Can you pretend you're a dragon? Yes? Let's go flying, then!" He spins Hugo around in a circle while George casts tiny glowing lights for Hugo to bat from the air, and you wonder why you ever thought Hugo would be less than perfect.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Thirty sees you made head of the department. Now you're the one who tells other people to cultivate patience and realize that not everything can be changed in a day. You know the system inside and out, and now and then, when you get a chance, you rewrite a single rule to make more sense and be more fair. You wish those chances came more often, but there's no sense forcing them through and creating more opposition to your efforts.

If you tell yourself that often enough, you may even come to believe it.

You try to leave in time to be home for supper - you don't want to ignore Rose and Hugo despite your new responsibilities - but somehow the work piles up and you start staying at the Ministry well into the evenings. You see your mother several times a week now, since she and Mrs. Weasley bullied you into letting them babysit your children. "You'll work yourself into a breakdown if you try to do everything at once, dear," Mrs. Weasley says when you protest, and your mother agrees with her.

You talk to your mother more than you've ever done before. It's strange to see her as a person instead of just your mother, but you wouldn't give up her support for anything. She listens to your frustrations and occasional triumphs; in return, she tells you about the trouble of being a woman in a man's field, and the way patients often assumed she was only your father's assistant. You commiserate over the way the world resists change, and she reminds you not to bog down and lose hope.

Ginny reinforces the message. "You've done stuff for house elves," she says when you drop Rose and Hugo off to stay with her children one weekend. "Why not try goblins? If you can fix the property laws, that might solve a lot of problems."

You begin planning a wizard-goblin summit the next day.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Thirty-seven, and Rose leaves for Hogwarts. She can't possibly be eleven already, can she? You can't possibly get through the next ten months seeing her only at Christmas and Easter. How on earth did your parents manage?

You meet Harry and Ginny at the platform and watch Harry talking to his second son, reassuring Albus that Hogwarts is safe and he won't be forgotten. Harry looks at peace, as if he doesn't have a single thing in the world that he wants to change. You wonder what his secret is. You wonder if he's blind.

The world is still so far from perfect.

Despite your reminders of good behavior, Rose rushes off to prod at Draco Malfoy's son. You grit your teeth, hoping old patterns don't repeat themselves for a third generation. Maybe you should look into reforming the school system as well as the laws and courts. If you don't teach the children tolerance and logic and organization, after all, they'll only deconstruct your system once they take over. But work eats your time and you never get around to more than floating the idea of a non-House system past Neville. He laughs and says the children would sort themselves if the professors didn't; it's not worth the frustration to try changing the system.

Reluctantly, you concede that struggle to future generations.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Forty-four, and Hugo gets a prefect's badge over the summer. He doesn't want it. "Being a prefect is a big responsibility," he tells you, "and it takes a huge amount of time. I'm already busy with Quidditch and helping Hagrid, and you know how hard I have to revise to keep my marks up in Transfiguration and Arithmancy. McGonagall only picked me because you're my parents. Malcolm Bones would be a much better choice; he's not trying for so many OWLs, and nobody goes around saying he's not a proper Hufflepuff."

You assure him that his choice is perfectly reasonable. Ron wants to explode - you can tell by the careful way he tells Hugo that he understands, and by the tinge of red at the tips of his ears - but he doesn't yell. He never yells at the children; that's your job.

"But _why_ doesn't he want it?" Ron asks you later. "Does he really believe McGonagall only offered him the badge because of us? Can't he see how bloody amazing he is? ...And how dare people go around talking behind his back! All right, it threw me when he went to Hufflepuff, but if that's the right house for him, it's the right house. If Harry's son could end up in _Slytherin_, I don't see why anyone thinks it's fishy for Hugo to be in Hufflepuff!"

You shrug. People are small-minded and prejudiced, and you've been beating your head against that truth for decades. But you don't try to explain that. You just hug Ron and say, "He'll be fine. Hugo's too sensible to pay attention to whispers behind his back."

The next week, as if one sidestepped crisis weren't enough, Rose dances through the front door and announces that she wants to be an Auror. You _hate_ the idea, but everyone else in the family thinks it's brilliant, and you can't hold her back just because you're afraid. She's as brave as Ron, and fencing her in would kill her as surely as any dark wizard.

Ron says Rose is as brave as _you_ are, that she wants to change the world while all he ever wanted was to keep his friends and family safe. You agree to disagree with him; you've both grown very good at that skill over the years, though it still takes a few minutes of raised voices before you remember that you don't have to be right all the time.

You smile at Rose, wish her luck, and tell her not to borrow trouble and push herself forward too much. She can't solve every problem in her division on her own, and trying will only win her enemies and wear her down from frustration and stress. She stares at you as if you were secretly Voldemort under Polyjuice. You can't figure out why. What's wrong with wanting to keep your daughter safe and happy?

Ron laughs his head off when you mention the exchange. Harry does the same. Neither of them bothers to explain the joke.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Forty-five is for a funeral; your mother dies. A heart attack steals her before you or your father can say goodbye. You stand beside your father at the grave, under a scorching summer sun, and can't think of a single thing to say.

The next day, you remember the Deathly Hallows and ask Harry where he put the stone - you don't want to cheat death, you tell him, but you want closure. You want to apologize to your father, and you don't know any other way to do it.

Harry refuses.

You scream yourself breathless, calling him heartless, selfish, hypocrite, coward. He stops Ginny's instinctive retaliation, sends her away, and sits on his sofa, letting you pour out poison, never responding. When you collapse on the floor, gasping with tears, he calls Ron and your children to take you home.

"He's right, you know," says Ron.

You slap him.

You don't speak to him for a whole day. But you can't hold onto that white-hot anger, and after a while you realize Harry was right; the Hallows are too dangerous to disturb, no matter how much any single person hurts. They're too easy to abuse. If you make an exception once, how much easier is it to make the next exception, and the next, and the next? You've spent your life campaigning against exactly that sort of attitude; if you give in now, if you claim that you're outside the rules, you're nothing but a hypocrite.

You ask your father over for tea instead. He sits awkwardly across from you, Ron, Rose, and Hugo - a strong man gone thin with age - and asks about your lives. You tell him about the disastrous mess the last wizard-goblin summit degenerated into, and Ron's badly-concealed panic at being his daughter's boss and having to order her into danger. Hugo mentions how much he liked his grandmother's stories about the Muggle world.

"I could tell some of those," your father says, slowly, and Hugo smiles.

For the first time, you learn how your father met your mother, and how often he stuck his foot in his mouth as a young man. His story reminds you of Ron. You think your father might be a person you'd like to know even if he weren't related to you.

You wonder why it took you so long to reach out to him.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Forty-seven is for an engagement and a wedding. Rose, who went through Hogwarts without so much as looking twice at a boy, and sailed through Auror training equally oblivious to the attention young men paid her, has fallen for Scorpius Malfoy.

"How? When? _Why?_" demands Ron, and Rose spins a vague story about a few shared detentions, working together on an Arithmancy project, and going to him for advice on a recent case. She's obviously leaving out details and you wonder, suddenly, how far back her interest in Scorpius really goes. What pieces of your daughter's life have you missed? Why didn't she trust you sooner? Is this punishment for how you treated your own parents?

Ron is furious, of course, but Rose has her father wrapped around her little finger. You're ambivalent. On the one hand, if you're not open to the possibility of social change, you're no better than a hypocrite. On the other hand, what can Rose possibly see in a _Malfoy?_

Scorpius comes to weekly family dinners, stiff and clumsy with tension, and tiptoes through stilted conversations, trying to seem responsible and harmless. Then, on Rose's twenty-first birthday, he pulls you aside in your kitchen and mumbles that he's been studying Muggle laws in his spare time. First it was to spite his parents, but now he thinks it might be helpful if the wizarding world began to license barristers the way they license wandmakers and Aurors.

"Albus said you're the person to ask about things like that," Scorpius says, "but I don't want to be any bother. Only I don't know who else to talk to, and I don't want to bribe people, not like my father - that's not right."

Rose pops in from the main room, says, "Aunt Luna just got here, Mum; I need to make introductions," and whirls Scorpius away before you unfreeze your brain enough to answer.

You drag Hugo aside to ask what he thinks about Scorpius. He sighs. "You have to put the war behind you, Mum," he says. "Slytherin isn't the same as evil, and anyway, Al Potter says Scorpius is a terrible liar. He just thinks you're the best way to get what he wants - he told me he wishes he were half as good as you at making things happen, and he thinks your reforms are brilliant. Can I get back to the cake now?"

You still suspect Scorpius may have ulterior motives, but you warm to him anyway. It's hard not to like people who support your causes, even if Scorpius has no idea how to implement his ideas and wants to confront the establishment head-on and bury himself in the inevitable backlash.

Besides, he loves Rose. Anyone with that much good taste can't be _all_ bad.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

On your fiftieth birthday, the department throws you a party. Scorpius, whom you try not to favor excessively, delivers the first toast: "To the woman who changed our world for the better," he says, raising his butterbeer. "May she continue to triumph." You smile graciously, but inside you wonder whether you've actually changed a thing.

The department and the Ministry still work on favors and secrets more than impartial rules. The courts are still an arbitrary mess. House elves still suffer, despite your contracts. Goblins and humans have spent years holding conferences and piecing together laws for the fair transfer of goblin-made artifacts, but the two races still distrust and talk past one another. Muggle-borns and werewolves face no overt discrimination, but you hear stories of prejudice every week. Al Potter and Scorpius have to be twice as fair and pleasant as anyone else to counteract the assumption that being Slytherins make them evil and untrustworthy.

When you were eighteen, you thought you were going to put everything right, thought you could fix all the world's problems in a handful of months. What happened between then and now? Where did you lose yourself?

You pace through your house, waiting for Ron to finish changing out of his work clothes. You're supposed to Floo over to the Burrow for a family celebration, but you stop Ron before he can throw powder into the fire. "They acted as if I'm a hero," you tell him, "as if I've fixed everything. But I haven't! The world is still a mess - the laws are unfair, people don't care, you and Rose and Harry still have to deal with all kinds of trouble, and nobody listens to anyone else! Why hasn't anything changed? What am I doing wrong? I've spent so much time trying to make things right, and what was the point of it all? I'm not a hero; I'm a failure."

Ron clenches his jaw and counts to twenty, ticking off each number on his fingers, and you know that even ten years ago he would have exploded into a tirade. Now he sighs, and says, "You're one person against the world, Hermione. Have some bloody perspective. So you haven't fixed everything - you still fixed a lot of stuff that nobody else wanted to deal with. Good enough is all anybody ever manages."

You think about that.

Good enough? You abandoned your parents, looked down on so many people, fought with your husband, neglected your children, took your friends for granted, and gave in to the system instead of bringing it down and building something better. How is that good enough?

"It's good enough because we know what you meant to do and say, even if the words came out wrong or things blew up in your face," says Ron, as if he can read your mind. Maybe by now he can; he knows you well enough. "We know you mean well, even when you make a mess of things. Let it go. Nobody can be perfect, not even you." He smiles, and offers his hand. "We're late, Hermione. Let's go to your party."

You look at the pictures on the walls: you and Ron and Harry back before you knew you were in a war; your wedding, with Ron smiling like a lunatic; the department celebration last year when the Wizengamot passed the law requiring certification of prosecutors; Harry and Ginny with their three children, peaceful and satisfied; Hugo and Charlie leaning against a sleeping dragon with identical stupid grins on their freckled faces; Rose and Scorpius, waltzing in the garden at the Burrow; your parents holding your hands and looking around Diagon Alley in childlike wonder. You think about things left undone, compromises and defeats. You think about the networks of partial support you've built over the years, about the arguments and the charts and the occasional spark of grudging agreement in former opponents' eyes. You think about quiet nights at Ron's side, lullabies sung to already sleeping children, and the bittersweet joy of seeing Rose and Hugo face the world on their own.

Distractions, all of them. You wonder what you could have changed by now if you didn't have family or friends. Then you wonder whether you would still care about what's right if you didn't have family and friends who have to live in the world you're trying to fix, if you didn't have people to remind you why fairness matters.

Maybe good enough will do for now. Maybe good enough is all anyone ever manages.

But next year, Rose is going to have a baby. You're going to be a grandmother. And there are still so many things to put right, so many things you wish you'd already fixed, things you _could_ have fixed if you'd only tried a little harder.

"If I could go back and start over..." you say, but you trail off, because even if you could go back and change your life, you _wouldn't_. Maybe not all your choices were right, but they carved you into who you are today, and slowly, piecemeal, forced the world into a new shape. And you can't change the past. All you can change is the future.

The world is still so far from perfect, but there are other things you care about now, things you should have paid more attention to all along. Somebody still has to change the world. But you don't have to do it all, and you don't have to do it alone.

"If you could go back and do things over, you wouldn't, because you're too sensible to try anything that bloody stupid," says Ron as he takes the jar of Floo powder off the mantel. "Come on, everybody's waiting."

He throws a handful of powder into the fire and steps through to the Burrow, to your family. You look at the pictures for a long moment, and then at the stack of parchment you brought home from your office, weighing them against each other. Then you throw powder onto the fire and follow Ron.

The world can wait for a while.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I greatly appreciate all feedback, but I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.

Also, to prove that I checked my math, a brief timeline:

1979 - Hermione is born on September 19  
1991 - Hermione, Ron, and Harry go to Hogwarts; Hermione is 11 (almost 12)  
1998 - Hermione leaves Hogwarts; end of the war; Hermione is 18 in June  
2003 - Hermione throws Ron out in August, when she's 23; they reconcile at Christmas  
2004 - Hermione and Ron marry in April; Hermione is 24  
2006 - Rose is born in February; Hermione is 26  
2009 - Hugo is born in March; Hermione is 29  
2017 - Rose goes to Hogwarts; Hermione is 37 (almost 38)  
2020 - Hugo goes to Hogwarts; Hermione is 40 (almost 41)  
2024 - Hugo gets a prefect's badge and Rose joins the Aurors; Hermione is 44 in July  
2025 - Hermione's mother dies in July; Hermione is 45  
2026 - Rose and Scorpius get engaged in October; Hermione is 47  
2027 - Rose and Scorpius marry in May; Hermione is still 47  
2029 - Hermione's 50th birthday on September 19


End file.
